Icons of Aviation History: F-84 Thunderjet

Plagued with problems during its development, the F-84 replaced the P-80 Shooting Star in the post-WW2 years.

F-84F Thunderstreak on display at the Barksdale AFB Global Power Museum in Shreveport LA

The Convoluted Presidential Election of 1876

The election of Rutherford B Hayes in 1876 was both one of the most corrupt and most convoluted elections in US history.

Rutherford B Hayes photo from WikiCommons

The Korean Game of Hobak Gonu

Hobak Gonu (“the pumpkin game”) is a traditional children’s board game from Korea.

Hobak Gonu gameboard

The Boeing Starliner Spaceship

The ill-starred Boeing Starliner spaceship was part of an effort by NASA to encourage and support private-industry space programs.

Boeing Starliner on exhibit at NASA Kennedy Space Center

The “Great Salt Lake Whales”

An odd tale about whales and Utah.

Great Salt Lake

Icons of Aviation History: The MiG-25 Foxbat

The MiG-25 was designed as a high-speed interceptor against American nuclear bombers. 

MiG-25 undergoing restoration at the US Air Force Museum photo from WikiCommons

The Florida Witch’s Grave

One of the oddest tourist spots in Tallahassee FL is the gravesite of a purported witch.

Elizabeth Budd Graham’s tombstone

Hueco Tanks, Texas

The Hueco Tanks area in Texas was home to indigenous people for thousands of years.

Hueco Tanks rock art photo from WikiCommons

Los Braceros

The Braceros Program was implemented during World War One and Two to recruit farmworkers from Mexico to work in the United States.

An exhibit of Braceros artifacts in the El Paso Museum of History

The Second Reich’s Genocide

In the midst of a bitter war, the German government began to round up people of particular ethnicities which it considered to be subhuman enemies, gathered them into concentration camps, and worked them to death as slave labor in a deliberate policy of extermination and  genocide. But this was not the Third Reich in Europe in 1940. It was the Second Reich in Africa in 1904.

Captured and chained Herero prisoners                   
photo from WikiCommons

The Hodges Meteorite

The Hodges Meteorite, on display in Tuscaloosa AL, is the first known example of a space rock that hit and injured a human.

The Hodges Meteorite, on display at the Alabama Museum of Natural History

The Battle of Lake Okeechobee

The Battle of Lake Okeechobee was part of the Seminole Wars, which have now been mostly forgotten.

General Zachary Taylor photo from WikiCommons

The People’s Liberation Army Air Force

The earliest history of Chinese aviation actually began in the United States.

Fuselage of Chinese Shenyang J8-II fighter on display at the Combat Air Museum in Kansas

The Hopkinsville Space Aliens

Today, “unidentified flying objects” are usually associated with extraterrestrial spacecraft, but in the pre-space race days of the 1940’s, they also had a different interpretation: the Cold War was raging, and it was assumed by many that the “discs” were actually some sort of secret Soviet aircraft, on surveillance missions over the US. By the 1950s, however, thanks to scifi movies and sensational books, the idea of UFOs as ET spacecraft was firmly fixed in the public’s imagination. And it was sealed forever by a famous report from Kentucky which made the phrase “Little Green Men” world-famous.

Hopkinsville Space Alien photo from WikiCommons

Florida’s Sinkholes

Billed as a “Geological Park”, Devils Millhopper, in Gainesville, contains a very large sinkhole which houses a profusion of humidity-loving tropical and semi-tropical native plants and wildlife.

Devils Millhopper sinkhole